Time running out for RI illegals

Time running out for RI illegals

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Following the end on Monday of the three-month amnesty program,
more than 400,000 Indonesians working illegally in Malaysia are
facing punishments of being whipped, fined or imprisoned before
their deportation.

As of Monday evening, there had been no last-minute surge of
illegal immigrants leaving the Malaysian Peninsula and East
Malaysia, meaning that up to 800,000 foreign illegals, including
400,000 Indonesians, remain in the country.

Officials at the manpower and transmigration ministry said
that only a few thousand workers had returned home through Riau,
Nunukan in East Kalimantan, Belawan port in North Sumatra and
Surabaya in East Java.

Malaysian authorities insisted that the crackdown to oust all
illegal immigrants in the country would proceed as 650,000 police
and volunteers were on standby as the midnight Jan. 31 deadline
drew nearer.

Home minister Azmi Khalid confirmed that the Malaysian
government would go ahead with the planned raid and illegals
would be punished, regardless of their country of origin.

Employers face up to a year in prison and fines of up to
50,000 ringgit for each illegal worker, with those hiring more
than five illegals also facing a flogging.

Illegal immigrants may be imprisoned for up to two years,
fined up to 10,000 ringgit (US$2,600) and given six strokes of
the cane.

Rights groups, including Amnesty International and the Human
Rights Watch, have strongly criticized the government's plan to
deploy hundreds of thousands of volunteers belonging to
neighborhood security groups in the sweep.

Members of the People's Volunteer Corps, an organization of
uniformed part-timers who have some policing powers, will receive
cash rewards for each migrant arrested, an economic incentive
that Human Rights Watch worries could lead to "vigilantism".

More than 20 activists of non-governmental organization (NGO)
Migrant Care staged a demonstration in front of the Malaysian
Embassy in Jakarta on Monday, calling for the suspension of the
raid, which they said would certainly affect relations between
the two countries.

Organization coordinator Anis Hidayat said Malaysia's economy
would collapse if all low-paid Indonesian workers were ousted and
their deportation would only make the unemployment problem in
Indonesia more complicated.

Since the Malaysian government introduced a three-month
amnesty program for illegal workers in October of last year --
which was extended following the Dec. 26 tsunami disaster -- only
some 280,000 of the Indonesian illegal workers in Malaysia have
benefited from the amnesty.

This is partly due to conditions whereby many workers'
salaries have allegedly been withheld by their employers and
those employed in remote areas have not yet received information
on the amnesty program.

Director general of labor export at the manpower and
transmigration ministry I Gde Arke was optimistic that the raid
against illegal workers would not be as dramatic as the mass
media and NGOs have feared.

"Both governments have agreed to settle the issue in the
spirit of ASEAN and treat the troubled immigrants humanely, both
during the crackdown and their deportation," he said, citing that
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was scheduled to visit
Malaysia on Feb. 14 to discuss the issue and the reconstruction
of Aceh.

More than 70 people died of starvation and numerous diseases
and many others were fined and jailed when Malaysian authorities
ousted more than 700,000 Indonesian illegal migrants from that
country in 2002.